Meaning / Bedeutung (Englisch/Deutsch). Paul Grice
to “A uttered x with the intention of inducing a belief by means of the recognition of this intention.” (This seems to involve a reflexive paradox, but it does not really do so.)
Now perhaps it is time to drop the pretense that we have to deal only with “informative” cases. Let us start with some examples of imperatives or quasi-imperatives. I have a very avaricious man in my room, and I want him to go; so I throw a pound note out of the window. Is there here any utterance with a meaningNN? No, because in behaving as I did, I did not intend his recognition of my purpose to be in any way effective in getting him to go. This is parallel to the photograph case. If on the other hand I had pointed to the door or given him a little push, then my behavior might well be held to constitute a meaningfulNN utterance, just because the recognition of my intention would be intended by me to be effective in speeding his departure. Another pair of cases would be (1) a policeman who stops a car by standing in its way and (2) a policeman who stops a car by waving.
Or, to turn briefly to another type of case, if as an examiner I fail a man, I may well cause him distress or indignation or humiliation; and if I am vindictive, I may intend this effect and even intend him to recognize my intention. But I should not be inclined to say that my failing him meantNN anything. On the other hand, if I cut someone in the street I do feel inclined to assimilate this to the cases of meaningNN and this inclination seems to me dependent on the fact that I could not reasonably expect him to be distressed (indignant, humiliated) unless he recognized my intention to affect him in this way. (Cf., if my college stopped my salary altogether I should accuse them of ruining me; if they cut it by [one pound] I might accuse them of insulting me; with some intermediate amounts I might not know quite what to say.) [385]
Perhaps then we may make the following generalizations.
(1) “A meantNN something by x” is (roughly) equivalent to “A intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention”; and we may add that to ask what A meant is to ask for a specification of the intended effect (though, of course, it may not always be possible to get a straight answer involving a “that” clause, for example, “a belief that …”).
(2) “x meantNN something” is (roughly) equivalent to “Somebody meantNN something by x.” Here again there will be cases where this will not quite work. I feel inclined to say that (as regards traffic lights) the change to red meantNN that the traffic was to stop; but it would be very unnatural to say, “Somebody (e. g., the Corporation) meantNN by the red-light change that the traffic was to stop.” Nevertheless, there seems to be some sort of reference to somebody’s intentions.
(3) “x meansNN (timeless) that so-and-so” might as a first shot be equated with some statement or disjunction of statements about what “people” (vague) intend (with qualifications about “recognition") to effect by x. I shall have a word to say about this.
Will any kind of intended effect do, or may there be cases where an effect is intended (with the required qualifications) and yet we should not want to talk of meaningNN? Suppose I discovered some person so constituted that, when I told him that whenever I grunted in a special way I wanted him to blush or to incur some physical malady, thereafter whenever he recognized the grunt (and with it my intention), he did blush or incur the malady. Should we then want to say that the grunt meantNN something? I do not think so. This points to the fact that for x to have meaningNN, the intended effect must be something which in some sense is within the control of the audience, or that in some sense of “reason” the recognition of the intention behind x is for the audience a reason and not merely a cause. It might look as if there is a sort of pun here (“reason for believing” and “reason for doing”), but I do not think this is serious. For though no doubt from one point of view questions about reasons for believing are questions about evidence and so quite different from questions [386] about reasons for doing, nevertheless to recognize an utterer’s intention in uttering x (descriptive utterance), to have a reason for believing that so-and-so, is at least quite like “having a motive for” accepting so-and-so. Decisions “that” seem to involve decisions “to” (and this is why we can “refuse to believe” and also be “compelled to believe”). (The “cutting” case needs slightly different treatment, for one cannot in any straightforward sense “decide” to be offended; but one can refuse to be offended.) It looks then as if the intended effect must be something within the control of the audience, or at least the sort of thing which is within its control.
One point before passing to an objection or two. I think it follows that from what I have said about the connection between meaningNN and recognition of intention that (insofar as I am right) only what I may call the primary intention of an utterer is relevant to the meaningNN of an utterance. For if I utter x, intending (with the aid of the recognition of this intention) to induce an effect E, and intend this effect E to lead to a further effect F, then insofar as the occurrence of F is thought to be dependent solely on E, I cannot regard F as in the least dependent on recognition of my intention to induce E. That is, if (say) I intend to get a man to do something by giving him some information, it cannot be regarded as relevant to the meaningNN of my utterance to describe what I intend him to do.
Now some question may be raised about my use, fairly free, of such words as “intention” and “recognition.” I must disclaim any intention of peopling all our talking life with armies of complicated psychological occurrences. I do not hope to solve any philosophical puzzles about intending, but I do want briefly to argue that no special difficulties are raised by my use of the word “intention” in connection with meaning. First, there will be cases where an utterance is accompanied or preceded by a conscious “plan,” or explicit formulation of intention (e. g., I declare how I am going to use x, or ask myself how to “get something across”). The presence of such an explicit “plan” obviously counts fairly heavily in favor of the utterer’s intention (meaning) being as “planned”; though it is not, I think, conclusive; for example, a speaker who has declared an intention [387] to use a familiar expression in an unfamiliar way may slip into the familiar use. Similarly in nonlinguistic cases: if we are asking about an agent’s intention, a previous expression counts heavily; nevertheless, a man might plan to throw a letter in the dustbin and yet take it to the post; when lifting his hand he might “come to” and say either “I didn’t intend to do this at all” or “I suppose I must have been intending to put it in.”
Explicitly formulated linguistic (or quasi-linguistic) intentions are no doubt comparatively rare. In their absence we would seem to rely on very much the same kinds of criteria as we do in the case of nonlinguistic intentions where there is a general usage. An utterer is held to intend to convey what is normally conveyed (or normally intended to be conveyed), and we require a good reason for accepting that a particular use diverges from the general usage (e. g., he never knew or had forgotten the general usage). Similarly in nonlinguistic cases: we are presumed to intend the normal consequences of our actions.
Again, in cases where there is doubt, say, about which of two or more things an utterer intends to convey, we tend to refer to the context (linguistic or otherwise) of the utterance and ask which of the alternatives would be relevant to other things he is saying or doing, or which intention in a particular situation would fit in with some purpose he obviously has (e. g., a man who calls for a “pump” at a fire would not want a bicycle pump). Nonlinguistic parallels are obvious: context is a criterion in settling the question of why a man who has just put a cigarette in his mouth has put his hand in his pocket; relevance to an obvious end is a criterion in settling why a man is running away from a bull.
In certain linguistic cases we ask the utterer afterward about his intention, and in a few of these cases (the very difficult ones, like a philosopher asked to explain the meaning of an unclear passage in one of his works), the answer is not based on what he remembers but is more like a decision, a decision about how what he said is to be taken. I cannot find a nonlinguistic parallel here; but the case is so special as not to seem to contribute a vital difference.